VICTORA: Old letter has me filling in the blanks about couple

Published: Saturday, September 29, 2012 at 05:40 PM.

The letter has survived more than 70 years, preserved between the pages of an old magazine. My guess is that is has outlived the young technical sergeant who wrote it and his wife who received it.

Most people would have thrown it away. But a Shalimar man and his wife say it’s their moral obligation to try to find any surviving family members and return the letter.

So they came to me.

I love mysteries, though I’m not sure I can help solve this one.

The couple found the letter in a National Geographic from the 1940s that they bought at a sale at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church a few years ago. When they gave their extensive collection to a local school, they kept the letter.

“It’s not only a family document,” said the man, who asked that his name not be used. “It’s kind of touching. It’s a guy writing to his wife.”

The letter was written by Tech. Sgt. William P. Hill, who was stationed at Wendover Field, Utah, to his wife, Zama. The letter, sent to an address in Dayton, Ohio, that no longer exists, was postmarked June 17, 1946, at 3:30 p.m.

He wrote it the day before, which was a Sunday.

“Dearest Zama,” the letter begins. In it, he updates his wife on news of whether or not he will be sent to another base, as well as more mundane updates.

“Good fishing near here,” he wrote. “Boys came in here last week with 93 trout, all of them about a foot long.”

He said some men were being sent overseas, but it wasn’t clear who or why. From what he could figure out, he would be remaining at Wendover.

“It’s hard to figure out what will happen,” he wrote. “Don’t worry about it. It can’t last forever.

“Well, I will close. Hope everything is ok. Love Bill.”

That’s all we have.

We don’t know if Bill and Zama had kids, how long they were separated, how the letter — and presumably the family — came to be in Florida.

But it’s tempting to fill in the blanks. I can imagine a young wife, forced to move back in with her parents, waiting for news of when she and her husband will be together again. I can see her picking up the magazine and using the letter as a bookmark, not noticing that it slipped down between the pages.

She probably forgot about it, or maybe she searched for it, planning to add it to a banded bundle of other letters from Bill.

But it slipped through, out of the past and into the future.

And this letter, with its tight slanting script, is all that remains to tell a tiny piece of their story.

Daily News Staff Writer Wendy Victora can be reached at 850-315-4478 or wvictora@nwfdailynews.com. Follow her on Twitter @WendyVnwfdn.

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The letter has survived more than 70 years, preserved between the pages of an old magazine. My guess is that is has outlived the young technical sergeant who wrote it and his wife who received it.

Most people would have thrown it away. But a Shalimar man and his wife say it’s their moral obligation to try to find any surviving family members and return the letter.

So they came to me.

I love mysteries, though I’m not sure I can help solve this one.

The couple found the letter in a National Geographic from the 1940s that they bought at a sale at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church a few years ago. When they gave their extensive collection to a local school, they kept the letter.

“It’s not only a family document,” said the man, who asked that his name not be used. “It’s kind of touching. It’s a guy writing to his wife.”

The letter was written by Tech. Sgt. William P. Hill, who was stationed at Wendover Field, Utah, to his wife, Zama. The letter, sent to an address in Dayton, Ohio, that no longer exists, was postmarked June 17, 1946, at 3:30 p.m.

He wrote it the day before, which was a Sunday.

“Dearest Zama,” the letter begins. In it, he updates his wife on news of whether or not he will be sent to another base, as well as more mundane updates.

“Good fishing near here,” he wrote. “Boys came in here last week with 93 trout, all of them about a foot long.”

He said some men were being sent overseas, but it wasn’t clear who or why. From what he could figure out, he would be remaining at Wendover.

“It’s hard to figure out what will happen,” he wrote. “Don’t worry about it. It can’t last forever.

“Well, I will close. Hope everything is ok. Love Bill.”

That’s all we have.

We don’t know if Bill and Zama had kids, how long they were separated, how the letter — and presumably the family — came to be in Florida.

But it’s tempting to fill in the blanks. I can imagine a young wife, forced to move back in with her parents, waiting for news of when she and her husband will be together again. I can see her picking up the magazine and using the letter as a bookmark, not noticing that it slipped down between the pages.

She probably forgot about it, or maybe she searched for it, planning to add it to a banded bundle of other letters from Bill.

But it slipped through, out of the past and into the future.

And this letter, with its tight slanting script, is all that remains to tell a tiny piece of their story.

Daily News Staff Writer Wendy Victora can be reached at 850-315-4478 or wvictora@nwfdailynews.com. Follow her on Twitter @WendyVnwfdn.